QUOTE : That the very next day I would no longer possess those swooning eyes, those devouring lips, the nightly renewed miracle of that body with its divine contours and savage embraces; and, after long spasms as powerful as sin and as deep as death, that naive stammering, those little laughs, those little tears, those languid little songs of a child or a bird—was it possible! And I would lose all that was more necessary for breathing than my lungs; more necessary for thinking than my brain; more necessary for nourishing my veins with warm blood than my heart! Impossible! I belonged to Clara like the coal belongs to the fire which devours and consumes it. Both to her and me, a separation had seemed so inconceivable and so insanely fantastic, so totally contrary to the laws of nature and life, that we had never spoken of it.